Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Tenar

Over a 37-year period, Ursula Le Guin used her Earthsea
series to state and refine her concepts of the nature of being and doing,
living and dying, mostly through the embodied voice of her character Tenar. As
a child, Tenar is stolen from the Kargad Lands, a bit more primitive than the
evolving islands of Earthsea. Tenar is dedicated as high prietess on the Island
of Atuan, where she is made complicit in the service of the “nameless ones,”
ordering people to die by starvation.

When Ged, an archmage, comes looking for the other half of the ring of
Erreth-Akbe, he
wins Tenar by his kindness. Tenar spares him, bringing him food and water. They escape from the Tombs where she has hidden him
and Tenar renounces her role as priestess. Ged takes her to the island of Gont,
to live with Ogion, one of Ged’s teachers. Though she is a woman, Ogion offers
to teach her magic, but Tenar refuses. She wants a man, children, an ordinary
life. She marries Flint, who owns Oak Farm, and they have two children.

When Flint dies, Tenar is left with the farm. She takes in a
child who has been abused and burned by her family. Ogion sends for her when he
is near death and she brings the disfigured child with her to the edge of the
sea, the Overfell where Ogion lives. Ogion sees something in the child, and
sees a change that is coming, but he is not able to state things clearly.

Tenar stays on and one morning the dragon Kalessin brings
Ged to her, half-dead. He has lost his powers in closing up the breach between
the worlds of the living and the dead. Tenar nurses him back to life. When the
soon-to-be king of Earthsea comes looking for him, Ged cannot face the fact
that he is no longer a powerful archmage. Tenar sends him to Oak Farm where he
becomes a goatherd, the job he did as a child. She tries to remember what it
was like to have been powerful and then to lose that, throw it away, become
only Tenar, only herself. “A woman got used to shame,” she thinks.

Tenar is caught between Aspen, an evil magician who is able
to cast a spell upon her, and the family of the child who maimed her. They
escape on the Dolphin, the ship of the king of Earthsea. He agrees not to
demand Ged’s presence until Ged is ready, and takes Tenar and the child back to
Oak Farm. But the child’s family finds them, Ged injures one of them and they
are brought to justice. Tenar suspects that the change Ogion predicted is that
magic will become less important once there is a king in Earthsea, who
establishes the rule of law.

Tenar takes Ged as a partner, in her bed and in her farm.
Together they teach the burned child and talk, especially in the winter when
the harvest has been good and there is not much to do but stay warm. In the
spring, Tenar’s son, the owner of the farm, returns. Tenar does not like how
Spark treats her and she and Ged plan to leave, to go back to Ogion’s cottage.
They are intercepted by Aspen, the evil magician, however, and the burned child
must call the dragon Kalissen to rescue them, revealing her own dragon nature,
and her real name, Tehanu.

Ursula Le Guin thought the series finished when she
described how Tenar and Ged became ordinary people in Tehanu [1990], the
fourth book of the series. In 2001, however, she published The Other Wind.
Here Tenar is called upon to counsel the king of Earthsea, as there is a
dispute between dragons and men, as well as some threat from the people of the
Kargad lands. We see Tenar’s importance as an older woman to the young people
who need courage to take up their roles in life: A Kargish princess is
terrified when she is brought to become queen. Tehanu is shy and dependent, but
it is she who is able to speak to the dragons. In the end, men and dragons meet
to restore the balance of the world, Tehanu takes her true form and Tenar is
able to return at last to live a quiet life with Ged on the island of Gont.

In spite of the fact that she consorts with dragons and
kings, gardens, meals, goats, sewing, hearthfires and stories in winter, and
occasionally a very good wine make up Tenar’s life. They restore and maintain
Earthsea’s equilibrium as well. When she wants to go back to Ogion’s cottage
Tenar thinks: “They would have to replant Ogion’s garden right away if they wanted
any vegetables of their own this summer. She thought of the rows of beans and
the scent of the bean flowers. She thought of the small window that looked
west.”

It is this down-to-earth and intimate description which made
me love Tenar. Le Guin recently said here:
“I’ve always been grateful for having a family and doing housework, and the
stupid ordinary stuff that has to be done that you cannot let go.” Le Guin
doesn’t hesitate to take up questions such as the value of death and rebirth as
opposed to immortality, and trust as the basis for relations between men and
women. Nevertheless, juxtaposing domesticity with magic and adventure; and finding common ordinary life more valuable is no mean feat!

About Me

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